


Some Kind of Tomorrow

by Crockzilla



Category: Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Slavery, Angst, Blood and Violence, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Doctor Peter Parker, Harry Osborn is so sad, Heavy Angst, M/M, Mild Gore, Rough Sex, Scary wade wilson, Social Justice, Woke peter parker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-20 05:14:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16549586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crockzilla/pseuds/Crockzilla
Summary: Peter hates Harry's father for a lot of reasons, but he doesn't know what to do about it. Until he meets Wade.





	Some Kind of Tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BendOver4Daddy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BendOver4Daddy/gifts).



> Thank you so much to liyonova (tumblr) for this idea! I don't know if it's what you had in mind, but I really really enjoyed writing it and I'm kind of in love with it, so I hope you like it!
> 
> Bless my beta, QQI25, for helping me navigate 19th century-esque voice and for the title, which would definitely have been "Kill Whitey" if you hadn't brought up Beloved! *all the kisses*
> 
> Title is from Toni Morrison's "Beloved."

Peter looked at the house of Norman Osborn with hate in his heart.

This man was helping him become a doctor. Because he liked him. There was no way Peter would have been able to afford school on his own, not now that it was just him and May. Most likely not before, either. May told him that he had earned it, that his diligence and good marks had gotten him the chance to study medicine, not just Norman Osborn’s money. Peter knew better. In this nation, you could work as hard as you liked, be as smart as you liked – nothing mattered except wealth.

Peter’s entire being cringed as he watched enslaved people carry his bags, serve them dinner, quietly and quickly, as if afraid to be noticed.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” Harry said to him at the table when his father was distracted, talking to one of his business associates.

Peter did his best to smile. He loved Harry.

“Young Mr. Parker is going to be a doctor,” he heard Norman say to his associate, gesturing grandly to Peter.

Peter did his best to smile. He hated Harry’s father.

*~*~*

Wade was covered in scars. He’d been burned as a child. He had also tried to run from every household he’d been sold into. It was as if he couldn’t stop running, no matter what was done to him. His eyes were more troubling – pale white shot through with red. Peter didn’t understand how he could see.

He’d heard about Wade from his daughter. It had horrified Peter to see a child so young working in the house. Careful not to be noticed, so that he didn’t bring her trouble, he had befriended her. 

“You’re a doctor?”

Talking to her had quickly revealed that Ellie might look young but emotionally, mentally, she had years on Peter. She asked him to please help her father, who’d been hurt. Again.

This time he hadn’t been brutally beaten for trying to leave, Peter was told by Wade’s friends who were sitting vigil with him. His head had been injured in an accident on the farm. Wade didn’t try to leave anymore, and Peter understood why. Norman would have been attracted by the idea of keeping a slave who had run from everyone else, finding a way to control him. So he kept Ellie in the house, safe and relatively comfortable. The threat was implicit.

Wade hadn’t meant to make a child, Peter was told. He thought he couldn’t make a child, but there had been a woman, and Wade had loved her even though she wouldn’t stay with him. The mother had died, from sickness or exhaustion or abuse or any of the other million things that killed people in their situation every day. Norman had found the child, and then he’d found the father, gathered them to himself. For sport. 

Peter’s hatred for the man was like an ember in his chest. Maybe Wade’s friends could sense that, and maybe that was why they trusted him to help, why they told him about this strange man. Or maybe they could see how Peter felt about Wade before even he did.

When Wade became conscious, he did not share his friends’ sympathetic feelings towards the “doctor” they’d let attend to him. Peter didn’t mind. Wade’s hateful glare was much better than being deferred to by people who had every right to want him dead.

Wade wanted him dead. He wasn’t shy about it. 

“It’s the only way,” Wade told him, casually. Peter visited him for days under the pretext of checking that Wade was healing well. “You all have to die. We have to kill you.”

Peter had been raised pacifist. His parents had been missionaries, killed on an island far to the south as they were trying to bring the Good News to people who most likely didn’t need or want it. Good News would have been that white people would leave them alone, stop raping their land and their families. Peter didn’t believe in God, not a good god, anyway. Clearly, if there was a power in the universe, it had shared its power only with people like him, and with rich men even more so. He never breathed a word of his feelings to his aunt because it would break her heart to know.

“You’re right.”

He would never forget the way Wade looked at him when he said it, strange white eyes piercing into him.

*~*~*

He’d imagined that Wade would be brutal, even ferocious. He didn’t know what part of that was his own prejudice from having been raised only around people like himself or from the terrifying things Wade had already said to him. In actuality, being with Wade was very much like being with any other man. Physically, at least. 

Wade seemed to enjoy pinning Peter down, forcing his way in. Peter could understand the appeal. After the first time, Wade realized he didn’t need to use force. Peter would do whatever he asked.

He panted, feeling the dirt floor of the cabin beneath his hands and his bare knees. Wade walked around him, taking his time, occasionally touching him with work-rough fingers. Peter could feel Wade’s eyes on him, on his skin, inspecting every exposed bit of him. He couldn’t help but feel as if he was being tested, sitting another difficult exam. He couldn’t help feeling he’d passed when Wade crouched behind him, pushing his face into the ground before shoving into him.

“Hush,” Wade growled over his shoulder. Peter bit his lip to keep from crying out again as Wade mercilessly fucked him. Punishing him. The thought made heat curl in Peter’s middle.

“Why are you doing this?” Wade asked once he’d finished and settled on his cot, leaving Peter to clean himself up with his own waistcoat. “Curiosity?”

Peter had been told many times that he talked too much. He wondered what it was about Wade that made him hesitant to speak, wanting to listen instead. 

“Guilt?” Wade asked when Peter didn’t answer. “Does letting me fuck you like a whore make you feel less guilty?

Peter winced as he worked his trousers up his legs, painfully aware that Wade was watching his graceless movements. “We don’t deserve to feel less guilty,” he said, quietly.

“We?” Wade asked, lighting a crude pipe.

“White men,” Peter clarified, trying not to cough from the noxious smoke. “What’s done can’t be undone. We must bear it. You should have your revenge.”

Wade looked at him for a long time. Peter did his best to hold the white, blood-shot gaze. Being with Wade was not very different from being with any other man, physically. But he’d never felt this way afterward, not with anyone else.

“If you turn on us,” Wade said, simply, “I’ll take your skin. I’ll eat it while you watch.”

Peter believed him, and nodded, solemnly. Then he listened to the plan.

*~*~*

“I’m terrible company, I know.”

So much of what came out of Harry’s mouth made Peter’s heart break for him.

“Thank goodness you aren’t around more,” he said, kicking a stray branch in front of Harry as they walked. “I wouldn’t be able to stand it.”

His joke seemed to increase Harry’s melancholy. Peter cursed himself. “I’m sure Father will give up on me learning to run the plantation soon enough,” Harry smiled, bravely. “And then I’ll be free to plague you at all hours.”

“Damn my luck,” Peter laughed, and that made Harry laugh, and Peter’s heart felt light for a moment.

“And you have your new friends to entertain you,” Harry said, nodding towards the slave cabins as they passed. Peter tried not to avert his eyes or blush, fearing that he might see a familiar, scarred face among the people gathered there.

“You don’t approve?” Peter asked, archly. “Surely it’s in your father’s best interest to not let them rot away without medical attention.”

Harry was quiet. Peter thought he might have genuinely stung his friend, and he found he didn’t mind if he had.

“Are they --?” Harry faltered, turning to Peter as they reached the steps of the big house. “How are they?”

Peter met his friend's beseeching gaze. “How are they?”

He found he couldn’t say anything else, not to such a profoundly stupid, infantile question. Harry seemed to understand him -- his face colored, and he looked away as if ashamed. 

“Let’s dress for dinner,” Harry sighed. “We’ll speak more after.”

Peter imagined, not for the first time, inviting Harry into his room. Asking Harry to help him dress. To stay the night with him. But the words didn’t get past his lips.

“I am so glad you’re here,” Harry said, smiling wanly at him before going into his room. 

Peter went into his own room, shut and locked the door, and then reached his hand into his trousers and gave himself relief. He imagined Harry’s face, sweet and secretive. As he crested, Harry’s eyes turned pale, blood-shot, his skin dark and scarred. Wade never allowed Peter to come in his presence – he imagined Wade watching him. Waiting.

*~*~*

“It happens tonight,” the old woman told Peter as he set a bundle at her feet. “Rain comes tomorrow.”

“Now?” Peter asked, chest seized with pain. He thought they had time, had even been so foolish as to hope that Harry might actually convince his father to do the right thing.

“Tonight,” the woman said, her sightless eyes sparking. “He says you’re to come straight here when you finish.”

Peter didn’t need to be told that the orders came from Wade. He promised to obey, then went back towards the house, careful not to be seen, walking through the plan in his mind even as his pulse thudded in his ears.

He was to sit in the study with Harry, his father, and the other gentlemen who came and went in a seemingly constant stream. He was to be polite and clever, not joining them in their pipes and brandy, just as usual. He was to wait until they had all retired for the night.

Peter managed it. The house was quiet when he crept from his room carrying the heavy canister. He forced himself not to hurry, though his fear that someone would smell the strong fumes before he had finished his work made his hands shake. 

His path led him to the small bedroom that held all of the people who worked in the house. He found them all sitting awake, calm and ready. Ellie held his hand as they hurried out of the house. He would have forgotten to continue the line of kerosene onto the wooden back porch if she hadn’t reminded him.

“Nearly done,” she whispered as they ran hand in hand towards the cabins, and Peter’s heart flooded with affection for her, just as it had done the first time they’d spoken.

He realized, when Ellie let go of him and ran towards a tallest figure in the waiting group, that he had never seen her with her father. The sight of Wade sweeping his little girl into his arms and holding her against his chest was overwhelming, and Peter looked away, feeling he didn’t deserve to watch such a profound meeting. He nearly missed one of their group lighting a rag tucked into a bottle and lobbing it back towards the house.

*~*~*

Once, Peter’s uncle had taken him to a slaughterhouse.

“I’m sorry, love,” he’d said even as he led Peter by the hand into the dim, stinking place. “But you have to see. So you can’t claim ignorance.”

Peter remembered crying so hard that his head and stomach hurt. The pigs were the worst – Ben and May kept pigs, and Peter adored them, how clever and cheerful they were. 

“You don’t have to forgive me,” Ben had said as he’d held him, after Peter had run out of the awful place into the fresh air. “But I had to show you.”

It had seemed strange and cruel from someone who Peter had only ever known to be gentle and loving. Now, as he stood in front of a great, burning house and shot a rifle at the figures fleeing from it, he understood why Ben had shown him such horrors.

Peter had snuck as many firearms out of the big house as he could over the days that he’d been one of Wade’s conspirators. He had seen some of the slaves – the former slaves – gunned down, but he’d seen far more of the white men fall. He felt proud even through his terror. It helped that there were simply many, many more black people than white. He wondered how Osborn hadn’t realized that before.

“You!”

Peter turned in time to see Harry’s face, blazing with rage, eyes streaming tears. He was bearing down on Peter with a knife in his raised hand.

“You did this!”

Peter dodged Harry’s swing, catching him in the stomach with the butt of his rifle.

“Don’t,” Peter warned, fending off the swinging, flashing bade.

“Did you kill him?” Harry snarled, lunging at Peter and wrapping both arms around him. “Was it you?”

Norman. Peter hadn’t killed him, but he had a guess as to who did. He imagined Wade’s great, strong arms choking the life out of Norman, the man who’d taken him, taken his daughter. He imagined Norman’s smug, cold face in a mask of fear and pain.

“Harry, please,” Peter begged, pushing his friend away with his rifle. He felt a bright, screaming burn along his forearm and knew that Harry had cut him.

“Goddamn you!” Harry howled, viciously slashing the knife. Peter thrust out with his rifle again, but his heart was not in it. Harry knocked the weapon from his hands and brought the knife down, this time nearly landing it in Peter’s chest. 

He understood that Harry wanted to kill him, even as he looked in his friend’s eyes and saw pain and the aching loneliness that he’d always seen there. Peter realized he was on the ground – he had fallen there in his desperation to get away from the knife. Harry leapt towards him, and Peter kicked out as hard as he could – he’d always been small and angry, and this was far from his first time fighting someone bigger than himself, as Harry knew well. 

Harry fell to the side, but immediately kept coming in his bloodlust. Peter looked directly into his eyes, even as he grabbed both of his friend’s wrists and heard the sickly sound of metal crushing through bone and muscle.

He’s killed me, Peter thought, looking down at the blood covering them both. Then he saw the knife handle and he understood what had happened.

Peter pulled Harry into his lap, wrapping both arms around him. His body was stiff, tense with shock and panic as life flowed quickly from it. Peter tried to staunch the bleeding, but he knew too much to believe that it would help. Harry’s mouth moved wordlessly. He stared up at Peter, his sweet, sad eyes wide with fear, the light from his burning home dancing over his face. Peter held his gaze until his face went slack and his eyes went dull. 

He felt a looming presence behind him and knew it was Wade. Wade was standing over him, watching him weep like a child over his dead friend, curled over the body he held to his chest. Wade would kill him now – because he was the last white man left in the place, because he was weak. His survival instinct urged him to run, but Peter didn’t have the will. He’d finished – he’d done what he said he’d do, and these people were free. He was useless now, just a murderer mourning his victim.

Peter felt Wade’s hand on his shoulders and braced himself – would Wade break his neck? Strangle him? Strangulation would be horrible, but he would be able to look at Wade’s face as he died.

“Come now,” a low, rough voice said in his ear. “Leave him.”

Peter unclenched his fingers as Wade’s hands covered his, pulling them away from Harry’s body. Wade’s strong arm went around Peter’s waist, pulling him up, letting Harry rest on the ground. He took a last look at the burning house, the bodies all over the yard, his friend’s among them, lit up by the glow of the fire.

“Come,” Wade growled. Peter obeyed, turning his back on the scene, running after Wade towards the woods.

They must have run for hours. The house fire lit their way for a while, and when it ran out, they had moonlight. They followed the river. Peter focused only on Wade’s back as the man ran ahead of him. His lungs burned as he struggled to keep up with Wade’s much longer legs, ignoring branches that cut at his face and limbs. 

He realized after a time that they were not going in the same direction as the others, not according to the plan, at any rate. Maybe something had gone wrong and the plan had changed. Maybe Wade was getting him lost so that he wouldn’t be able to track them. Maybe Wade was still going to kill him.

It was nearly dawn when they found a small community of run-down houses and barns. Peter knew he should know where they were, but it wouldn’t come to his mind. He marveled at the poverty that others lived in while men like Osborn grew richer and richer. Well – not anymore, he supposed.

He followed Wade into a small barn on the edge of the town. There were no animals inside, but a great deal of hay stored up. Wade found a little alcove in the far corner and laid down in the hay as if he lived there. Peter remembered that Wade had done this before -- run for his life. He sat down a few feet away, leaning back against the stacked bales, and exhaustion swept through him. Maybe Wade was going to rest before he killed him.

“Are we meeting the others?” Peter asked, quietly. 

“They should be close to the border by now,” Wade said without opening his eyes. “Safe.”

Safe – the word was a balm on Peter’s heart. He thought of Harry, of neighbors or visitors finding his body a few feet from his burned home. He thought of May – would they tell her Peter had died in the fire? Would they know he had helped with the revolt? The thought of May knowing he had killed people made his chest ache, but he did want her to know what he’d done. He had done something.

“I’m going South,” Wade said, eyes still closed, hands pillowed behind his head as if he was lying on a creek bank on a nice, summer day. “You can go where you like. You’ll be hunted.”

“I know,” Peter said, archly. He didn’t need Wade to tell him that he couldn’t go home to May, that he couldn’t finish medical school. 

He also didn’t need Wade to tell him that he was planning to go South to free more slaves, kill more slavers.

“I’m coming with you.”

The sound of Peter’s own voice startled him. Wade’s eyes finally opened, and he looked at Peter, those white, impossible eyes shot through with red. Peter held his breath and looked back at him.

“Sleep,” Wade said, finally. He turned onto his side and closed his eyes again. 

Peter lay down in the hay, too exhausted to mind the way it scratched at him or the smell. He tried to settle his mind. It was cold, and he was not dressed for it. Wade wasn’t, either, but Wade was probably used to sleeping in spite of much worse distractions than being a little chilly. 

Peter tried to close his eyes, but he couldn’t stop looking at the man laying a few feet away from him. He knew so little about him, except that he was brave. He looked at Wade’s scarred, dark face and remembered a rough touch on his skin, a punishing burn inside of him, shattering him apart.

Wade’s eyes opened and Peter was caught. There was no sense in trying to look away, pretend he hadn’t been gazing at him. Wade’s face remained expressionless, but he reached an arm out towards Peter.

“Come here,” he said after Peter hesitated.

Peter sat up and crawled to him, letting Wade turn him so that he faced away, letting Wade wrap around his back, arm over his waist. 

It was looking less and less likely that Wade would kill him. It was more likely that they would both die soon – shot while trying to burn down a plantation, or hung side by side after being arrested or caught by an angry mob. He thought of the people they would manage to help. He thought of Ellie, safe with Wade’s loyal friends, safe somewhere that was not the United States.

“Sleep,” Wade said, breath warm against Peter’s neck. Peter closed his eyes and obeyed. He would do whatever Wade asked for as long as they both lived.

**Author's Note:**

> So that was weird and not at all what I typically write but I had fun and I hope you all did, too! Yay, radical social justice!
> 
> Next up: wedding fun, dacryphilia (SURPRISE), possibly more med fet -- who knows?!? I have SO many fun things on my Spreadsheet and I promise I will get to all of them, even if it takes me a while!
> 
> Tumble me: crockzilla.tumblr.com


End file.
